


Our Lord and Master

by thetransgirlwhoneverwas



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU, Gen, lots of people die in painful horrible ways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-02 07:08:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16782100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thetransgirlwhoneverwas/pseuds/thetransgirlwhoneverwas
Summary: What if...The Master had taken a position on Gallifrey as Lord Burner?





	Our Lord and Master

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rae_marie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rae_marie/gifts), [Floptopus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Floptopus/gifts), [Gaz042](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gaz042/gifts).



The Lord Burner strode down the hallways of the Capitol, robes billowing dramatically behind him. That had been the second adjustment he’d had made to them, right after toning down the collar that had been ostentatious even by his towering standards. He may have had a flamboyant personality and lofty opinion of himself even before he had become Lord Burner, but those collars were simply too much for anyone.  
As he walked, the other Time Lords inhabiting the hallways had a satisfying tendency to leap out of his way with urgency uncharacteristic of themselves. Quite literally, in some cases, as he had seen with no end of amusement several Time Lords flatten themselves against the wall, pull others out of the way, and once someone had performed a rather undignified vault over an inconveniently placed table in order to evade his path. He preferred not to let his amusement show on his face, however: his steely gaze only served to make the others more afraid of him. Terrified they would be next, he supposed, desperately racking their brains for any time they may have slighted the Lord President in the past. Not that anybody dared to slight the Lord President now, of course. Not with him prowling the citadel.  
Much as he would have loved to simply stalk the corridors and watch them fall silent at his approach, he did have a job to do. Though he chafed at the very idea of taking orders from others, and the reality of actually doing so was painful enough, this was not the time for dissent. This role really had been wonderful training for his patience though. He supposed he ought to thank the Lord President for the wonderful opportunity to train his skills. He wasn’t going to, of course.  
Finally, after deciding to actually pay attention, he spotted his target, his prey.  
“Ah, there you are, Gazeverstonatra! I’ve been looking all around the Capitol! Hello, you!” he announced, voice dripping with mock amiability.  
Gazeverstonatra paused her conversation with her companions - “The name is Gaz, if you please” - and turned to see who had called, eyes widening in abject fear for a second as she identified him, before regaining her composure.  
“How may I help you, my Lord Burner?” she bowed deeply as she spoke, perhaps hoping grace and sycophancy would save her from what she assumed to be his task.  
The Lord Burner smirked at his title. Everyone knew him now. Previously the position of Lord Burner had been very secretive, with even many Presidents not knowing it existed, but since he had been appointed he had made sure everyone was aware of who he was at all times. Of course, even before he had been Lord Burner, back when he was still the Master, everyone still knew him. He’d never let anyone forget.  
“Oh, don’t worry, it’s nothing too serious,” he replied, his tone making the lie plainly obvious to anyone listening. “I just need your help with a little device I’ve been working on, that’s all!”  
Gaz looked around for support, but found that her associates had abandoned her and ran for their own lives at the first opportunity. That was Time Lords for you, thought the Lord Burner: always talking a big game about helping others, but never genuinely concerned for anything but themselves. No wonder he fit right in here, at the very top of the Gallifreyan food chain.  
“O-of course my Lord, h-h-how may I assist?” Gaz’s composure started to break.  
“Well, I’ve been working on this nifty little thing, but I’m not sure if it’s working properly yet. Care to help me test it?” the Lord Burner retrieved his device from his robes and Gaz’s eyes widened even more as she recognised the shape: though it had had modifications done to it, it could only be his signature TCE.  
At this, Gaz lost any sense of calm, moving backwards until she was literally against the wall. “M-m-m-my Lord, please, please don’t, please let me-”  
“Oh, you don’t want to?” the Lord Burner leered at her, keeping the false tone as he enjoyed watching her squirm. “Pity.”  
He let his voice drop to a whisper, leaned in close, and said in a voice thick with menace “I’ve a Burn Edict that tells me you’re just the Time Lady for the job.”  
Gaz could barely speak above her panicked gasping breaths anymore. “Please, m-m-m-m-m-my Lord, whatever I’d done I-I-I-I’m sorry I apologise just please don’t...I-I don’t-”  
“You don’t know what this new device is?” he resumed his normal tone, approaching the end of his sadistic game. “Well, I call it the Temporal Compression Eliminator. It’s very clever see, it reduces someone’s future timeline down to a single second. Ah, I suppose it’s rather hard to explain. I know! I’ll demonstrate for you!”  
Gaz didn’t even have time to beg for her lives anymore before the Lord Burner pointed the Temporal Compression Eliminator at her and fired. He saw her scream silently as she aged to death, her body decayed, and her skeleton crumbled to dust and was blown away by the winds of the future. A second after he had pulled the trigger, there was nothing left of her, no trace that she had been standing in front of him pleading for mercy just seconds ago.  
“Well now, that WAS an intriguing experiment!” the Lord Burner announced to nobody, as he turned and strode back the way he came, robes billowing dramatically behind him.

\--

As he approached the Lord President’s office, the Lord Burner considered his name. He had wondered about his name before. He had always loved his old name, but it felt like a wasted opportunity to not flaunt his new title to all and sundry. The thought of combining his names was a tempting one, but “Master Burner” felt somehow less lofty than “Lord”, and “Burner Master” sounded like he was trying to differentiate himself from other Masters, a ridiculous notion. There was only ever one Master.  
Thoughts on this would have to be resolved later, however, as he entered the Lord President’s office to the sight of an almost apoplectic Time Lord who had clearly been awaiting his arrival as eagerly as someone on that level of fury would allow. As much as it pained him to do so, the Lord Burner decided toning down his smugness would be a good idea in this situation.  
“You! You have disappointed me, Lord Burner!” the President practically spat the title at him.  
“My Lord?” he was tempted to say something sarcastic in response, but now was not the time. Contrary to popular belief, he was capable to being subdued on occasion.  
“I made you Lord Burner because of your service to Gallifrey in destroying the Eminence!” the President continued, his voice unwavering in its intensity. “I tolerated you being more open with the role because you were good at it, and you were loyal, but your flippancy has gone too far this time!”  
The Lord Burner opened his mouth to say something in response, but the President was determined not to let him get a word in edgeways, a desire he reluctantly obeyed.  
“Your refusal to be secretive about your killings has always been frustrating, but now it’s come back to bite me - and Gallifrey!” the President quickly added. “The public assassinations you’ve been doing have got the Temporal Powers scared of us!”  
“But, my Lord,” the Lord Burner said with as much humility as he could manage, “was making the other powers fear us not the purpose of expanding my duties to those species outside of Gallifrey?”  
“The purpose was to be subtle about it!” the President pressed a button on the console in front of him, bringing up the image of a report from one of Gallifrey’s many spies in the galaxy. “One of our scouts has reported that the leaders of the Temporal Powers are planning to gather on the planet Timore to share technology and strategies and devise a way to overthrow us!”  
The President was standing now, clearly trying to intimidate the Lord Burner, who was pretending it was working.  
“Your inane theatrics will have lead to the end of our temporal superiority unless we stop this meeting!”  
He took a breath, seemingly to calm himself.  
“I’m taking a huge risk doing this, but there’s nobody else who can do it,” the President said. “Consider this your last chance, Burner. Your Edict is to go to Timore and ensure that the Temporal Powers cannot be a threat to us. Eliminate their leaders, and destroy any shared technology that could lead to them overtaking ours!”  
“My Lord,” the Lord Burner responded with mock concern. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? Instructing me to Burn a few members of a lesser species is one thing, but the leaders-”  
“I’ve never known you to object to killing somebody,” the Lord President interrupted, narrowing his eyes to tell him that this order was not negotiable. “Have I made myself clear?”  
The Lord Burner said nothing. He simply bowed deeply, turned, and left the room.  
“The future of Gallifrey may well depend on the outcome of this mission,” the President murmured to himself. “Don’t make me regret giving it to you.”

\--

“I could have sworn I left it around here somewhere…”  
The Lord Burner searched for his lost item among shelves overflowing with books, weapons, and junk. He felt he should really tidy his TARDIS up one of these days. His previous incarnations had kept it spotless and meticulously organised in the past, but he’d been having too much fun gallivanting around the universe, murdering people and taking souvenirs to really bother.  
As his TARDIS approached the planet, the Lord Burner remembered Timore. He’d been there once, although he didn’t really remember why. An undeveloped planet, with a large proportion of the surface covered by sand. However, dotted around the planet were a series of thirty huge lakes, large enough that they could be seen from orbit. These lakes existed in a perfect geometric pattern around each axis of the planet. If the planet had been flat, the Lord Burner thought, the lakes would make it look like the face of a clock. He considered that appropriate.  
Nobody had discovered why the lakes had formed in such a perfect arrangement, but the Timorians had taken to living on the lakes, as they provided wildlife and water with which to sustain themselves, building large floating towns, with only a few spots of civilisation between the lakes, consisting mostly of camps designed for rest and restocking for travelling from one lake to the next.  
“Aha!” he found his desire after several minutes of searching through endless piles of trophies from decades worth of assassinations he barely remembered, and quickly stashed it in the dimensionally transcendental pocket he had added to his robes. He had debated going in disguise, but considering how many of the Temporal Powers would be present at the meeting, he reasoned that any illusions or disguises would be quickly detected and removed. He would simply have to go as himself and avoid detection.  
As his TARDIS landed a few miles away from the meeting on Timore, he quickly made sure he had everything he needed, and exited the doors of the TARDIS, to the sight of precisely twenty seven guards pointing very large guns at him. The Lord Burner sighed dramatically, then slowly and reluctantly raised his hands above his head, making sure to brush his hand against his robe momentarily.  
A member of the Monan Host approached him.  
“One did not think there would not be Materialisation Delay Fields put in place around this planet, did one? This TARDIS has been materialising for the past three days. One could not have missed its arrival if one was deaf and blind!” it laughed, the sound grating on the Lord Burner’s mind.  
A Warpsmith was the next to approach.  
“Ah, Lord Burner. The President of Gallifrey’s personal dog of war,” she scoffed, unconcerned with the perils of patronising him. “We thought we might see you here. What should we do with you, then?”  
“Kill him! Shoot him!” shouted another Monan, one that the Lord Burner couldn’t see.  
“No, we can use him,” the Warpsmith argued. “A bargaining chip against your beloved Lord President. Guards, take him to the camp and keep him under the tightest lock and key you can find.”  
“Well, it would seem I have no choice,” the Lord Burner said in his usual eloquent tone. “I am utterly helpless and at your mercy.”  
The guards searched him, emptied his pockets, and marched him away, making him walk for what felt like miles, which he was sure was entirely unnecessary and was only done to annoy him. When they finally reached the camp near to where the meeting was taking place, they placed him in a makeshift cell that had clearly been set up specifically for the arrival of an intruder: him.  
Most of the guards left to fulfil their other duties around the camp, leaving two Sunari to stand watch over the Lord Burner, their guns still trained on him.  
“Well, this must be an absolutely riveting job for you,” he tried to engage them in conversation, but one of them cocked his gun which made a worrying sound. He sat back on his bench. “Okay, okay, I hear you, no talking.”  
He was quiet for a few minutes before he spoke up again. “My my, it’s rather hot out here. These robes aren’t exactly the lightest of clothes, you know?”  
The aggressive guard cocked his gun again and moved a step closer to the cell threateningly, but the Lord Burner simply shrugged. “What’s wrong with a little small talk? I can’t hurt you by just talking to you, can I?”  
The guard considered this for a couple of seconds, before stepping back again, but keeping his gun trained on his prisoner.  
“They couldn’t have picked a cooler planet to meet on, could they?” he continued. “Mind you, those big black suits of yours don’t exactly look comfortable right now. Just look at how much you’re sweating, you’re liable to just drop those guns right now.”  
The alert guard didn’t move, or acknowledge his words at all, but the other one lowered his gun an inch.  
“I can’t even imagine how hot you must feel right now. And for what, so your bosses can go and natter about silly old us being better than them at time travel?”  
The guard closed his eyes for a second and took a deep breath, not allowing the words to get to him.  
“I can’t imagine you’re being paid too well either. It’s something that leaders never understand, you need to pay your flunkies or they won’t do a very good job.”  
The guard spoke finally: “Quiet!” as he stepped forward again, aiming his gun directly between the Lord Burner’s eyes.  
“Oh, for a better job with good pay, where you didn’t have to stand out here in the sun listening to silly old me prattle on about nothing. Honestly,” he looked directly into the eyes of the more quiet guard. “You’d kill for that, wouldn’t you?”  
“Shut u-” was as far as the contentious guard got before a shot from the other guard’s gun tore through the side of his head, and he slumped to the ground. The shooter, realising what he’d done as the hypnosis wore off, turned towards the Lord Burner, but he had already opened the cell door and knocked his gun from his hands.  
“Thank you for your cooperation,” he quipped, and snapped the Sunari’s neck with a quick motion.  
“Now then,” he said to himself, “the main attraction.” He started to leave in the direction the other guards had left in, which he assumed was where the meeting would be, before stopping, turning around, setting off the alarm next to his cell, and leaving instead for a more roundabout route to the meeting.  
After walking briskly for a couple of minutes, he heard several guards approaching, and ducked behind a tent as he waited for them to pass. Knowing he must be close, and that all the guards would have gone to find him, he set off, walking fast towards the meeting.  
As he approached, he heard them discussing something. He didn’t really listen to what they were saying, but he did hear the words “Gallifrey”, “sanction”, and “destroy” mentioned more than once.  
The leaders of the Temporal Powers were sitting around a medium sized circular table, all with a small handheld computer communicating back to their respective homeworlds.  
Briefly surveying the area and discovering a naïve lack of security, he simply walked out in front of the table, announcing “Hello, you!” to the assembled Temporal Powers.  
The Warpsmith who had captured him earlier stood up in shock. “You! How did you escape?”  
“Oh, come now, you didn’t really think you could keep me locked up like that, did you?” the Lord Burner laughed. “Child’s play, really.”  
“Who are you?” asked a voice the Lord Burner didn’t care to identify.  
“This is-” started the Warpsmith.  
“Ah-ah-ah, please, allow me,” he interrupted. “I am the Lord Burner of Gallifrey, personal assassin to the Lord President, and you, my unfortunate friends, have the terrible luck of being on my list.”  
Most of the Temporal Powers had the good sense to look terrified, but the Monan and Warpsmith who had captured him earlier seemed confident in themselves.  
“One is not afraid of any Gallifreyan thug!” announced the Monan.  
“Our guards will be here any second, and we searched you when you arrived,” the Warpsmith boasted. “You have no weapons!”  
“Ah, well, you see, I might have been a little sneaky back then,” he admitted, brushing his hand against his robe again and causing the dimensionally transcendental pocket in his robes to pop back into existence. The Warpsmith and Monan, realising they had been outwitted, joined the others in their horror.  
“And I bring a gift from that other timefaring species you didn’t invite to this little pow-wow: the Daleks.”  
He retrieved the device from his pocket - a Dalek Time Destructor - and activated it, throwing it into the centre of the table. The leaders of the Temporal Powers screamed and cowered, but were unable to escape the field as they started to age and decay. One of them pointed incredulously at the unaffected Lord Burner.  
“Me? Oh, of course I modified it to exclude my own genetic code from the Destructor field,” he gloated. “No effect on me at all, I’m afraid.”  
As the Temporal Powers lay dying, the Lord Burner walked to each of their chairs in turn and, retrieving a small drive from his pocket, inserted it into each of their handheld computers for a few seconds before moving on. After he had finished with the computers, he turned and started walking in the direction of his TARDIS.  
“Well, that’s all I have to say I’m afraid! I do hope you enjoy the rest of this meeting. You know how stressful meetings like this can be. Why sometimes they make you feel a hundred years older!” He guffawed at his own joke, before leaving with a buoyant wave and a “laters!” as the leaders of Gallifrey’s enemies died behind him.

\--

The Lord Burner strode into the High Council chamber, robes billowing dramatically behind him.  
“Your report, Lord Burner,” demanded the Lord President, itching to hear good news.  
“The leaders of the Temporal Powers aren’t going to bother us anymore, my Lord,” he supplied. “It seems they don’t feel as quite young as they did yesterday.”  
“Enough of your flourishes Burner, are they dead?”  
“Yes, yes, they’re dead,” he sighed. The Time Lords had always been rather too stuffy to appreciate his particular sense of humour.  
“And their time technology?” the President pressed.  
“Okay, okay, keep your collar on!” the Lord Burner replied, making the President practically seethe with indignation. “I implanted a virus into all of their little computers. By now the virus will have linked to their mainframes on the homeworlds and infected all their systems, destroying any traces of temporal research or technology. I even made it biological, so it will be happily erasing all memory of how to use time as we speak, oh, I am proud of my little creation!”  
“So they still have all their timeships? If you’ve let me down you incompetent-”  
“Yes, they still have their timeships,” he interrupted, almost seething himself at the President insulting his capabilities, “but it will take them hundreds, thousands of years to learn how to use any of it again. I’d say that’s plenty of time to invade and destroy any technology they have, and to subjugate what little resistance there may be.”  
The Lord President’s rage had not yet subsided. “Invade? INVADE? I can’t simply go in and wipe them out! There are agreements, treaties, alliances to think of! Why do you think I made sure this mission stayed a secret from everybody but the High Council?”  
“Oh, I never said you were going to invade my Lord,” the Lord Burner responded very coolly. “I will. Why do you think I set up this whole charade to start with?”  
The President started to respond with fury, but it was almost instantly replaced with confusion. “You? Are you trying to tell me-”  
“Oh, do keep up!” the Master was finished with his thin veneer of respect. “Of course I set this all going!”  
“Bu-but the Temporal Powers were meeting to stop us being so much-”  
“Better than them, yes, yes, but why do you think they felt that way? Could it be because you had been instructing me to simply wipe out anyone who slightly annoyed you my good Lord President, as I persuaded you to do?” his voice crawled with sarcasm.  
“You objected against my Burn Edicts on non-Time Lords! You cannot pretend-”  
“Oh, do shut up you myopic moron!” the Master was enjoying the sound of his own voice, and showing off his genius. “I didn’t want you to know that I was manipulating you, what kind of resistance would that introduce? No, couldn’t have that.”  
“So, you wanted the Temporal Powers to-”  
“Of course I wanted them to turn against us! What better way to get them all gathered in one place so I could apply the coup de grace to any resistance against Time Lord superiority? Why else, do you suppose, I made my little assassinations so public and obvious? Of course I could have wiped them from history, made sure nobody remembered them, but I didn’t want to! I wanted them to remember! I wanted them to notice! And I wanted them to be afraid!”  
The realisation of the Master’s plan all along slowly dawned on the Lord President. “So...so now that you’ve destroyed all the Temporal Powers…”  
“That’s correct my esteemed Lord President!” the sarcasm was back, before it was dropped for that menacing whisper the Master was so infamous for. “Now, it’s your turn.”  
The Master snapped his fingers and the door to the chamber closed and sealed itself, trapping the High Council in the room with him, leaving no possible means of escape. With a charmingly jaunty smile, he turned to each member of the High Council and killed them one by one with his Temporal Compression Eliminator, watching with barely contained glee as they aged to death and faded to nothing before his very eyes.  
Once the last member of the High Council was dead, he approached the Lord President, who was trying in vain to hide himself in the shadows at a corner of the room. He took a moment to savour the terror in the President’s eyes. The President tried to speak, to beg for his life, to curse the Master, to say anything, but the only thing his stammering voice could muster was a pathetic “y-y-you, you, y-you-”.  
“You know, I really should thank you,” the Master sounded almost sincere as he stood over the Time Lord who had ordered him around for years.. “Without your truly astounding gullibility, none of this would have been possible.”  
With that, he fired his TCE and watched the life leave the Lord President’s eyes as he fell, his features withering to stark bones that deteriorated and fell away to nothing. The plan he had devised, developed, and manipulated others into carrying out for decades ran through his mind as he watched the last obstacle to his dominion fade from view. Taking the Lord President’s seat in the centre of the chamber, he started to record the message he would send out across the universe.  
“Peoples of the Universe, please attend carefully. I am the Grand Master, Overlord and Imperator of the Time Lords of Gallifrey, and you will all obey me…”


End file.
